Biography
Origins
I was born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania on July 14, 1967. My family lived in various suburbs of Pittsburgh, such as Carnegie and McKees Rocks, until 1976, when, save a brief season in Albuquerque, New Mexico, we moved to Southern California.
What was left of my elementary school years, we lived in Glendora and then, from sixth grade on, Mission Viejo. I attended Capistrano Valley High School from 1981 - 1985. Twenty years later, Capo Valley served as inspiration for Abbeque Valley High in my first novel.
Eighties To Nineties
My first real job, not counting endless hours at my father’s body shop and two days at Pup ‘n’ Taco when I was 16, was at Tower Records in El Toro, California. I started there in the summer of 1985… it was a formative time, and I met many people who would shape and influence me for years to come. When Tower finally went out of business in 2006, I wrote about the long-lasting impact of my eighteen months in their employ.
I think I was nineteen when I moved out of my parents’ house. This was a little apartment in Lake Forest, right next to the cemetery. From there, I lived in San Clemente, Mission Viejo (but not back home), San Clemente again, Costa Mesa, San Clemente again, Irvine, and Long Beach. I liked San Clemente and Long Beach most of all… it’s nice to live near an ocean.
The major theme of my twenties was music — I played in three bands from 1987 - 1997: Psychopathway, Loveless, and PIGBAT. I also did dozens and dozens of solo acoustic shows. Along with all of that was all the expected accessories: women, drink, excess, drama, and more drama.
I had a series of retail jobs after Tower, and two that were far from retail working for the Immigration and Naturalization Service and TRW… but by the end of my twenties, I was back in retail at Borders Books and Music, where I would work for the next ten years.
Into the 21st Century
In the late mid-nineties, I started distributing my creative endeavors on the Internet and World Wide Web.
First was Sovereign Serials, a webzine that featured stories written by myself and others with the shared setting of the Sovereign Era, an alternate history I created where “people with amazing abilities change the course of human destiny..!” I also produced several issues of the ad-supported “Multiverse Magazine,” which presented science fiction and fantasy with a strong world-building element. A lot of my music went online, and I started blogging.
In October of 2004, I produced my first podcast, The MWS Media Radio Show, later re-titled DIY Endeavors. It was one of the first music podcasts, and may have been the first to focus entirely on DIY, independent music from all over the world. In September of 2005, I released my first novel, “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era” in print, DRM-free ebook, and free podcast editions. It was the first work of original fiction with an initial simultaneous release in those formats, and one of the first podcast novels, or “podiobooks.”
The Internet, Open Source, and Creative Commons were all missing pieces to the DIY ethic I’ve observed since I was a teen-ager, and everything came together with the advent of podcasting, social networking, and the first stirrings of the merit-based, niche economy in the early Aughts. Now in the second third of my life (or, hopefully, the second quarter!) I am focused on being a DIY, independent creator.
